October 30, 2018: Day 80 – Ecclesiastes 7

When you begin this chapter you almost fall into a deep, deep depression.  I mean who says that it is better to die than it is to be born?  I mean who says that it is better to go to the house of mourning than it is to the house of feasting?  I know, a person who is in the final years of their life and sees the vanity of life as a pursuit of tenuous pleasures and knows that there has to be more to life than that.  That really is who Solomon must have become at the end of his life.  But then he throws in vs.18 and we have to pause and say: You go boy!  “It is good that you should take hold of the one, without letting go of the other; for the one who fears God shall succeed with both.”  This is a precursor to Paul’s Philippians 4:13: I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.